The Climate Bathtub Animation
What happens if we cap carbon emissions at current levels? Or continue their growth? Or reduce them? This simple animated simulation of the global carbon system is great for helping people explore the relationship between carbon emissions and atmospheric CO2.
The Climate Bathtub Simulation is a brief, animated, interactive simulation game that teaches several principles regarding the dynamics of the global carbon cycle and climate change. Designed for children and adults, its purpose is to improve understanding of how changes in carbon dioxide emissions will affect levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The sim was created by a multi-organization collaboration (see below) and is copyrighted by Schlumberger Ltd.
Resources for Using and Sharing the Bathtub Sim
- Watch a video of Drew Jones leading viewers through the sim. Produced by Morgan Stanley's Office of the Environment.
- We have some guidance about how best to facilitate a group with the simulation. (pdf)
- Sterman and Booth Sweeney’s paper contains the best explanation of the dynamics behind the animated simulation.
Sim Background
The mathematical model underneath the animation is a System Dynamics model built by Dr. Thomas Fiddaman as part of his 1997 PHD thesis at MIT.
A portion of the model was distilled into a simplified stock-and-flow framework by Dr. Fiddaman’s thesis advisor, Dr. John Sterman of the System Dynamics Group at MIT and tested with a range of groups for its effectiveness at teaching the dynamics insights.
Dr. Sterman and Dr. Linda Booth Sweeney, then a graduate student in education, used the stock-and-flow framework to research the public misunderstanding of climate change dynamics, confirming the need for new tools to improve public understanding. They published their findings in the journal, Climatic Change.
Andrew Jones and Don Seville wrote an article on these findings and identified the need for better learning tools.
Sterman and his team at MIT constructed an online interactive simulator to teach the principles.
SEED, the community development program of Schlumberger Ltd, led by Michael Tempel and Simone Amber, and Linda Booth Sweeney then convened the collaborators named above plus Dr. Peter Senge of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) and MIT to create the “Climate Bathtub Sim.” They engaged Dr. Idit Caperton and MaMaMedia to create the interactive simulation with children and youth in mind. Sustainability Institute, supported by IT at Citigroup and Nike, joined to bridge the science and model with the communications and Sim design. The Bathtub Sim is copyrighted by Schlumberger Ltd and is one of many simulations on science, climate, and systems thinking.
Morgan Stanley’s Office of the Environment then produced a video of SI’s Andrew Jones talking the viewer through the key insights of the Sim.
Beth Sawin, Phil Rice, and others at SI’s Our Climate Ourselves program are developing approaches to support action on climate change that complement the Bathtub Sim.
Various members of the team are now engaged in developing further simulations similar to the Climate Bathtub Sim.
Simulations
